Fresh and Clean from Scratch

Thanks to my sister in law and her BFF, their blog is Recycled Soup, I had a pre-researched and pre-tested recipe to start making my own homemade liquid and dry laundry detergent, fabric softener, stain remover and dishwasher detergent. I have been looking into doing this for a while through Pinterest and other blogs I follow. But I just hadn’t actually gotten up the gumption to do it. Well, I ran out of dishwasher detergent. It wasn’t on sale anywhere. And I was being cheap. So, I thought now is as good a time as any to start making my own.

I followed all their recipes linked to above and learned a few things in the process.

It’s not that hard to make your own. If I recall correctly, the longest part of the process was waiting for the soap to melt into the water of our soap pot. The other thing is, to make the powdered laundry detergent you have to grate the soap bar. That takes a minute and some muscle.

It works! I washed a blanket I had left at a relatives house that was a smoker. This blanket was soaked to the core with stale smoke smell. I put it in the wash with my new homemade liquid laundry detergent and presto-NO SMELL. The smoke was replaced by a clean, soap scent and the blanket was clean. As was my next load of white with very dirty socks thanks to the 15 year old.

The best thing I learned, IT’S SO CHEAP! Here is a breakdown of the cost:

borax-$4.09

vinegar-$.65

citric acid-$4.29

fels naptha bar-$1.29

washing soda-$3.15

baking soda-$.50

kosher salt-$2.00

one large soap pot-$5.00 at Goodwill

Ingredients for liquid laundry detergent

I agree with the Recycled Soup girls in that the dry laundry detergent is a little more cost effective and less time consuming to make since you don’t have to melt the soap. After I finish using all my liquid detergent I will be making a bucket of the dry with my leftover ingredients. We made a total of 2 gallons of liquid laundry detergent, one batch of dishwasher detergent, and 2 pints of stain remover. We spent $22.91 for everything, no coupons were used on ingredients. You CAN buy some of these products with coupons to make your initial investment cheaper. We have enough products left to make lots more of everything!

Liquid laundry detergent after adding Borax and washing soda

My cost breakdown boils down to this: $0.33/batch for 1 pint of stain remover-not sure how long it lasts yet, $0.78/batch for 192 loads of laundry-liquid recipe (0.004 cents per load), and $3.38/batch for 12 loads of dishwashing detergent (0.28 cents per load). I’m pretty sure I can find a cheaper, online source for the citric acid to make this more cost effective in the future. But, all in all, I will NEVER go back to store bought laundry products again. Because even on my BEST coupon deal I have never been able to score free laundry detergent and stain remover. And as cheap as this is, it’s practically free!